Meeting of Counselling and Psychotherapy Professional Liaison Group

There was then a presentation by Michael Guthrie, HPC Head of Policy and Standards. This was as hollow as could be expected. A slide highlighted the fundamental principles of HPC: openness, transparency, inclusiveness, diversity, public protection, professional and lay input throughout all processes… Safeguarding the Ethics of clinical practice – small detail – was not among these principles. MG predicted that there will be times when PLG members may disagree with each other. He announced that at such times they would be expected to move on in ‘pragmatic ways’, and stressed several times that members would be asked to make ‘very pragmatic decisions’. He professed his commitment to ongoing consultation with people and organisations that had been ‘unsuccessful’ in joining the group, and said that he would seek contributions from them at the reference meetings, scheduled to take place over two separate days. He added that once the PLG work is completed it will be submitted to Council and other stakeholders for further consultation. If necessary, the PLG would then reconvene to undertake further work in view of their feedback.

After this, the meeting moved to consider the responses to the HPC document ‘Calls for ideas’. Attempts were made by some HPC members to progress the meeting, ignoring the strong voice of opposition to regulation through HPC. These attempts quickly came to grief, so much so that the rest of the meeting was dominated by considerations and discussions about this. Early interventions by HPC members misrepresented the nature of this dissent, presenting it as being opposition to statutory regulation and regulation in general. Thankfully, Kathi Murphy (UKCP) took up the position of representing the voice of opposition, which she maintained throughout the meeting. She clarified that many practitioners are not against statutory regulation, but are very concerned about regulation by the State. She developed the arguments in relation to this eloquently, and also raised the expressed concern about psychotherapy being subsumed to the medical model. Several attempts were made by some HPC members to quickly dismiss Kathi’s points with banal and patronising arguments. Some told the group that they understood and sympathised with these concerns, but that they were based on myth rather than reality. They too had been anxious about regulation, but things had turned out well after all. They too had worried about being subsumed to the medical model, but had found that HPC does not at all impose this model on their professions. And the medical language of HPC could be reviewed – for example, patients could be called clients. On this point, Kathi responded that the language of HPC and the language of psychotherapy are fundamentally different. She emphasised that the difference is philosophical in nature, that the difference could not be resolved by simply changing some linguistic terms, and that psychotherapy articulates itself not in one language but in many different languages. Mick Cooper asked how non-health modalities may fit into the discourse of HPC. Other PLG members raised the issue of the heavy promotion of CBT, insisting that the work of the group should counteract this bias. The point was also made that the work of the group should not be NHS focused.